The Boss, and How He Came to Rule New York

It would seem as though I had had Death to be my neighbor from the beginning, for his black shadow was in constant play about me. One day he would take a victim from out my very arms; again he would grimly step between me and another as we sat in talk. Nor did doctors do much good or any; and I have thought that all I shall ask, when my own time comes, is a nurse to lift me in and out of bed, and for the rest of it, why! let me die.

It was Anne to leave me now, and her death befell like lightning from an open sky. Anne was never of your robust women; I should not have said, however, that she was frail, since she was always about, taking the whole weight of the house to herself, and, as I found when she was gone, furnishing the major portion of its cheerfulness. That was what misled me, doubtless; a brave smile shone ever on her face like sunlight, and served to put me off from any thought of sickness for her.

It was her heart, they said; but no such slowness in striking as when Big Kennedy died. Anne had been abroad for a walk in the early cool of the evening. When she returned, and without removing her street gear, she sank into a chair in the hall.

“What ails ye, mem?” asked the old Galway wife that had been nurse to Blossom, and who undid the door to Anne; “what’s the matter of your pale face?”

“An’ then,” cried the crone, when she gave me the sorry tale of it, “she answered wit’ a sob. An’ next her poor head fell back on the chair, and she was by.”

Both young Van Flange and I were away from the house at the time of it; he about his business, which kept him often, and long, into the night; and I in the smothering midst of my politics. When I was brought home, they had laid Anne’s body on her bed. At the foot on a rug crouched the old nurse, rocking herself forward and back, wailing like a banshee. Blossom, whose cheek was whitened with the horror of our loss, crept to my side and stood close, clutching my hand as in those old terror-ridden baby days when unseen demons glowered from the room-comers. It was no good sight for Blossom, and I led her away, the old Galway crone at the bed’s foot keening her barbarous mourning after us far down the hall.

Blossom was all that remained with me now. And yet, she would be enough, I thought, as I held her, child-fashion, in my arms that night to comfort her, if only I might keep her happy.

Young Van Flange worked at his trade of stocks like a horse. He was into it early and late, sometimes staying from home all night. I took pride to think how much more wisely than Morton I had judged the boy.

Those night absences, when he did not come in until three of the morning, and on occasion not at all, gave me no concern. My own business of Tammany was quite as apt to hold me; for there are events that must be dealt with in the immediate, like shooting a bird on the wing. A multitude of such were upon me constantly, and there was no moment of the day or night that I could say beforehand would not be claimed by them. When this was my own case, it turned nothing difficult to understand how the exigencies of stocks might be as peremptory.

One matter to promote a growing fund of confidence in young Van Flange was his sobriety. The story ran – and, in truth, his own mother had told it – of his drunkenness, when a boy fresh out of his books, and during those Barclay Street days when he went throwing his patrimony to the vultures. That was by and done with; he had somehow gotten by the bottle. Never but once did he show the flush of liquor, and that fell out when he had been to a college dinner. I had always understood how it was the custom to retire drunk from such festivals, wherefore that particular inebriety gave me scant uneasiness. One should not expect a roaring boy about town to turn deacon in a day.

Blossom was, as I’ve said, by nature shy and secret, and never one to relate her joys or griefs. While she and he were under the same roof with me, I had no word from her as to her life with young Van Flange, and whether it went bright, or was blurred of differences. Nor do I believe that in those days there came aught to harrow her, unless it were the feeling that young Van Flange showed less the lover and more like folk of fifty than she might have wished.

Once and again, indeed, I caught on her face a passing shade; but her eyes cleared when I looked at her, and she would come and put her arms about me, and by that I could not help but see how her marriage had flowered life’s path for her. This thought of itself would set off a tune in my heart like the songs of birds; and I have it the more sharply upon my memory, because it was the one deep happiness I knew. The shadows I trapped as they crossed the brow of Blossom, I laid to a thought that young Van Flange carried too heavy a load of work. It might break him in his health; and the fear had warrant in hollow eyes and a thin sallowness of face, which piled age upon him, and made him resemble twice his years.

Towards me, the pose of young Van Flange was that one of respectful deference which had marked him from the start. Sometimes I was struck by the notion that he was afraid of me; not with any particularity of alarm, but as a woman might fear a mastiff, arguing peril from latent ferocities and a savagery of strength.

Still, he in no wise ran away; one is not to understand that; on the contrary he would pass hours in my society, explaining his speculations and showing those figures which were the record of his profits. I was glad to listen, too; for while I did not always grasp a meaning, being stock-dull as I’ve explained, what he said of “bull” and “bear” and “short” and “long,” had the smell of combat about it, and held me enthralled like a romance.

There were instances when he suggested speculations, and now and then as high as one thousand shares. I never failed to humor him, for I thought a negative might smack of lack of confidence – a thing I would not think of, if only for love of Blossom. I must say that my belief in young Van Flange was augmented by these deals, which turned unflaggingly, though never largely, to my credit.

It was when I stood waist-deep in what arrangements were preliminary to my battle for the town, now drawing near and nearer, that young Van Flange approached me concerning Blackberry Traction.

“Father,” said he – for he called me “father,” and the name was pleasant to my ear – “father, if you will, we may make millions of dollars like turning hand or head.”

Then he gave me a long story of the friendship he had scraped together with the president of Blackberry – he of the Hebrew cast and clutch, whom I once met and disappointed over franchises.

“Of course,” said young Van Flange, “while he is the president of Blackberry, he has no sentimental feelings concerning the fortunes of the company. He is as sharp to make money as either you or I. The truth is this: While the stock is quoted fairly high, Blackberry in fact is in a bad way. It is like a house of cards, and a kick would collapse it into ruins. The president, because we are such intimates, gave me the whole truth of Blackberry. Swearing me to secrecy, he, as it were, lighted a lantern, and led me into the darkest corners. He showed me the books. Blackberry is on the threshold of a crash. The dividends coming due will not be paid. It is behind in its interest; and the directors will be driven to declare an immense issue of bonds. Blackberry stock will fall below twenty; a receiver will have the road within the year. To my mind, the situation is ready for a coup. We have but to sell and keep selling, to take in what millions we will.”

There was further talk, and all to similar purpose. Also, I recalled the ease with which Morton and I, aforetime, took four millions between us out of Blackberry.

“Now I think,” said I, in the finish of it, “that Blackberry is my gold mine by the word of Fate itself. Those we are to make will not be the first riches I’ve had from it.”

Except the house we stood in, I owned no real estate; nor yet that, since it was Blossom’s, being her marriage gift from me. From the first I had felt an aversion for houses and lots. I was of no stomach to collect rents, squabble with tenants over repairs, or race to magistrates for eviction. This last I should say was the Irish in my arteries, for landlords had hectored my ancestors like horseflies. My wealth was all in stocks and bonds; nor would I listen to anything else. Morton had his own whimsical explanation for this:

“There be those among us,” said he, “who are nomads by instinct – a sort of white Arab, don’t y’ know. Not intending offense – for, gad! there are reasons why I desire to keep you good-natured – every congenital criminal is of that sort; he is, really! Such folk instinctively look forward to migration or flight. They want nothing they can’t pack up and depart with in a night, and would no more take a deed to land than a dose of arsenic. It’s you who are of those migratory people. That’s why you abhor real estate. Fact, old chap! you’re a born nomad; and it’s in your blood to be ever ready to strike camp, inspan your teams, and trek.”

Morton furnished these valuable theories when he was investing my money for me. Having no belief in my own investment wisdom, I imposed the task upon his good nature. One day he brought me my complete possessions in a wonderful sheaf of securities. They were edged, each and all, with gold, since Morton would accept no less.

“There you are, my boy,” said he, “and everything as clean as running water, don’t y’ know. Really, I didn’t think you could be trusted, if it came on to blow a panic, so I’ve bought for you only stuff that can protect itself.”

When young Van Flange made his Blackberry suggestions, I should say I had sixteen hundred thousand dollars worth of these bonds and stocks – mostly the former – in my steel box. I may only guess concerning it, for I could not reckon so huge a sum to the precise farthing. It was all in the same house with us; I kept it in a safe I’d fitted into the walls, and which was so devised as to laugh at either a burglar or a fire. I gave young Van Flange the key of that interior compartment which held these securities; the general combination he already possessed.

“There you’ll find more than a million and a half,” said I, “and that, with what you have, should make three millions. How much Blackberry can you sell now?”

“We ought to sell one hundred and fifty thousand shares. A drop of eighty points, and it will go that far, would bring us in twelve millions.”

“Do what you think best,” said I. “And, mind you: No word to Morton.”

“Now I was about to suggest that,” said young Van Flange.

Morton should not know what was on my slate for Blackberry. Trust him? yes; and with every hope I had. But it was my vanity to make this move without him. I would open his eyes to it, that young Van Flange, if not so old a sailor as himself, was none the less his equal at charting a course and navigating speculation across that sea of stocks, about the treacherous dangers whereof it had pleased him so often to patronize me.

CHAPTER XXV – PROFIT AND LOSS; MAINLY THE LATTER

SINCE time began, no man, not even a king, has been better obeyed in his mandates, than was I while Chief of Tammany Hall. From high to low, from the leader of a district to the last mean straggler in the ranks, one and all, they pulled and hauled or ran and climbed like sailors in a gale, at the glance of my eye or the toss of my finger. More often than once, I have paused in wonder over this blind submission, and asked myself the reason. Particularly, since I laid down my chiefship, the query has come upon my tongue while I remembered old days, to consider how successes might have been more richly improved or defeats, in their disasters, at least partially avoided.

Nor could I give myself the answer. I had no close friendships among my men; none of them was my confidant beyond what came to be demanded of the business in our hands. On the contrary, there existed a gulf between me and those about me, and while I was civil – for I am not the man, and never was, of wordy violences – I can call myself nothing more.

If anything, I should say my people of politics feared me, and that a sort of sweating terror was the spur to send them flying when I gave an order. There was respect, too; and in some cases a kind of love like a dog’s love, and which is rather the homage paid by weakness to strength, or that sentiment offered of the vine to the oak that supports its clamberings.

Why my men should stand in awe of me, I cannot tell. Certainly, I was mindful of their rights; and, with the final admonitions of Big Kennedy in my ears, I avoided favoritisms and dealt out justice from an even hand. True, I could be stern when occasion invited, and was swift to destroy that one whose powers did not match his duty, or who for a bribe would betray, or for an ambition would oppose, my plan.

No; after Big Kennedy’s death, I could name you none save Morton whose advice I cared for, or towards whom I leaned in any thought of confidence. Some have said that this distance, which I maintained between me and my underlings, was the secret of my strength. It may have been; and if it were I take no credit, since I expressed nothing save a loneliness of disposition, and could not have borne myself otherwise had I made the attempt. Not that I regretted it. That dumb concession of themselves to me, by my folk of Tammany, would play no little part in pulling down a victory in the great conflict wherein we were about to engage.

Tammany Hall was never more sharply organized. I worked over the business like an artist over an etching. Discipline was brought to a pitch never before known. My district leaders were the pick of the covey, and every one, for force and talents of executive kind, fit to lead a brigade into battle. Under these were the captains of election precincts; and a rank below the latter came the block captains – one for each city block. Thus were made up those wheels within wheels which, taken together, completed the machine. They fitted one with the other, block captains with precinct captains, the latter with district leaders, and these last with myself; and all like the wheels and springs and ratchets and regulators of a clock; one sure, too, when wound and oiled and started, to strike the hours and announce the time of day in local politics with a nicety that owned no precedent.

There would be a quartette of tickets; I could see that fact of four corners in its approach, long months before the conventions. Besides the two regular parties, and the mugwump-independents – which tribe, like the poor, we have always with us – the laborites would try again. These had not come to the field in any force since that giant uprising when we beat them down with the reputable old gentleman. Nor did I fear them now. My trained senses told me, as with thumb on wrist I counted the public pulse, how those clans of labor were not so formidable by three-fourths as on that other day a decade and more before.

Of those three camps of politics set over against us, that one to be the strongest was the party of reform. This knowledge swelled my stock of courage, already mounting high. If it were no more than to rout the administration now worrying the withers of the town, why, then! the machine was safe to win.

There arose another sign. As the days ran on, rich and frequent, first from one big corporation and then another – and these do not give until they believe – the contributions of money came rolling along. They would buy our favor in advance of victory. These donations followed each other like billows upon a beach, and each larger than the one before, which showed how the wind of general confidence was rising in our favor. It was not, therefore, my view alone; but, by this light of money to our cause, I could see how the common opinion had begun to gather head that the machine was to take the town again.

This latter is often a decisive point, and one to give victory of itself. The average of intelligence and integrity in this city of New York is lower than any in the land. There are here, in proportion to a vote, more people whose sole principle is the bandwagon, than in any other town between the oceans. These “sliders,” who go hither and yon, and attach themselves to this standard or ally themselves with that one, as the eye of their fancy is caught and taught by some fluttering signal of the hour to pick the winning side, are enough of themselves to decide a contest. Wherefore, to promote this advertisement among creatures of chameleon politics, of an approaching triumph for the machine, and it being possible because of those contributed thousands coming so early into my chests, I began furnishing funds to my leaders and setting them to the work of their regions weeks before the nearest of our enemies had begun to think on his ticket.

There was another argument for putting out this money. The noses of my people had been withheld from the cribs of office for hungry months upon months. The money would arouse an appetite and give their teeth an edge. I looked for fine work, too, since the leanest wolves are ever foremost in the hunt.

Emphatically did I lay it upon my leaders that, man for man, they must count their districts. They must tell over each voter as a churchman tells his beads. They must give me a true story of the situation, and I promised grief to him who brought me mistaken word. I will say in their compliment that, by the reports of my leaders on the day before the poll, I counted the machine majority exact within four hundred votes; and that, I may tell you, with four tickets in the conflict, and a whole count which was measured by hundreds of thousands, is no light affair. I mention it to evidence the hair-line perfection to which the methods of the machine had been brought.

More than one leader reported within five votes of his majority, and none went fifty votes astray.

You think we overdid ourselves to the point ridiculous, in this breathless solicitude of preparation? Man! the wealth of twenty Ophirs hung upon the hazard. I was in no mood to lose, if skill and sleepless forethought, and every intrigue born of money, might serve to bring success.

Morton – that best of prophets! – believed in the star of the machine.

“This time,” said he, “I shall miss the agony of contributing to the other fellows, don’t y’ know. It will be quite a relief – really! I must say, old chap, that I like the mugwump less and less the more I see of him. He’s so deucedly respectable, for one thing! Gad! there are times when a mugwump carries respectability to a height absolutely incompatible with human existence. Besides, he is forever walking a crack and calling it a principle. I get tired of a chalkline morality. It’s all such deuced rot; it bores me to death; it does, really! One begins to appreciate the amiable, tolerant virtues of easy, old-shoe vice.”

Morton, worn with this long harangue, was moved to recruit his moody energies with the inevitable cigarette. He puffed recuperative puffs for a space, and then he began:

“What an angelic ass is this city of New York! Why! it doesn’t know as much as a horse! Any ignorant teamster of politics can harness it, and haul with it, and head it what way he will. I say, old chap, what are the round-number expenses of the town a year?”

“About one hundred and twenty-five millions.”

“One hundred and twenty-five millions – really! Do you happen to know the aggregate annual profits of those divers private companies that control and sell us our water, and lighting, and telephone, and telegraph, and traction services? – saying nothing of ferries, and paving, and all that? It’s over one hundred and fifty millions a year, don’t y’ know! More than enough to run the town without a splinter of tax – really! That’s why I exclaim in rapture over the public’s accommodating imbecility. Now, if a private individual were to manage his affairs so much like a howling idiot, his heirs would clap him in a padded cell, and serve the beggar right.”

“I think, however,” said I, “that you have been one to profit by those same idiocies of the town.”

“Millions, my boy, millions! And I’m going in for more, don’t y’ know. There are a half-dozen delicious things I have my eye on. Gad! I shall have my hand on them, the moment you take control.”

“I make you welcome in advance,” said I. “Give me but the town again, and you shall pick and choose.”

In season, I handed my slate of names to the nominating committee to be handed by them to the convention.

At the head, for the post of mayor, was written the name of that bold judge who, in the presence of my enemies and on a day when I was down, had given my Sicilian countenance. Such folk are the choice material of the machine. Their characters invite the public; while, for their courage, and that trick to be military and go with closed eyes to the execution of an order, the machine can rely upon them through black and white. My judge when mayor would accept my word for the last appointment and the last contract in his power, and think it duty.

And who shall say that he would err? It was the law of the machine; he was the man of the machine; for the public, which accepted him, he was the machine. It is the machine that offers for every office on the list; the ticket is but the manner or, if you please, the mask. Nor is this secret. Who shall complain then, or fasten him with charges, when my judge, made mayor, infers a public’s instruction to regard himself as the vizier of the machine? – its hand and voice for the town’s government?

It stood the day before the polls, and having advantage of the usual lull I was resting myself at home. Held fast by the hooks of politics, I for weeks had not seen young Van Flange, and had gotten only glimpses of Blossom. While lounging by my fire – for the day was raw, with a wind off the Sound that smelled of winter – young Van Flange drove to the door in a brougham.

That a brisk broker should visit his house at an hour when the floor of the Exchange was tossing with speculation, would be the thing not looked for; but I was too much in a fog of politics, and too ignorant of stocks besides, to make the observation. Indeed, I was glad to see the boy, greeting him with a trifle more warmth than common.

Now I thought he gave me his hand with a kind of shiver of reluctance. This made me consider. Plainly, he was not at ease as we sat together. Covering him with the tail of my eye, I could note how his face carried a look, at once timid and malignant.

I could not read the meaning, and remained silent a while with the mere riddle of it. Was he ill? The lean yellowness of his cheek, and the dark about the hollow eyes, were a hint that way, to which the broken stoop of the shoulders gave added currency.

Young Van Flange continued silent; not, however, in a way to promise sullenness, but as though his feelings were a gag to him. At last I thought, with a word of my own, to break the ice.

“How do you get on with your Blackberry?” said I.

It was not that I cared or had the business on the back of my mind; I was too much buried in my campaign for that; but Blackberry, with young Van Flange, was the one natural topic to propose.

As I gave him the name of it, he started with the sudden nervousness of a cat. I caught the hissing intake of his breath, as though a knife pierced him. What was wrong? I had not looked at the reported quotations, such things being as Greek to me. Had he lost those millions? I could have borne it if he had; the better, perhaps, since I was sure in my soul that within two days I would have the town in hand, and I did not think to find my old paths so overgrown but what I’d make shift to pick my way to a second fortune.

I was on the hinge of saying so, when he got possession of himself. Even at that he spoke lamely, and with a tongue that fumbled for words.

“Oh, Blackberry!” cried he. Then, after a gulping pause: “That twist will work through all right. It has gone a trifle slow, because, by incredible exertions, the road did pay its dividends. But it’s no more than a matter of weeks when it will come tumbling.”

This, in the beginning, was rambled off with stops and halts, but in the wind-up it went glibly enough.

What next I would have said, I cannot tell; nothing of moment, one may be sure, for my mind was running on other things than Blackberry up or down. It was at this point, however, when we were interrupted. A message arrived that asked my presence at headquarters.